Letters to a future teacher
On Saturday I had the honor of being the commencement speaker at the University of Michigan’s School of Education. With an audience of 394 men and women who had earned their degrees and their families and friends, I focused on the opportunities — not the challenges — facing them. Here’s an excerpt.
‘For all the attacks on teachers and the bad news from Wisconsin, New Jersey, Florida, Ohio and elsewhere, something wonderful is happening here. Teaching is now front and center in the education reform debate. It used to be testing, but now it’s teaching. Everyone from the President to Bill Gates acknowledges that teachers matter.
Time was, there was no national dialogue because school was not about teaching, not even for teachers. Teaching was just what some people did to make a living. Today, it’s much more than that.
It’s a hard time to be a teacher. But I also think there’s never been a better time to bec